Comrade in arms
In March 1930 in New York’s Union Square, the Communist Party led a massive worker demonstration, the largest in American history at the time. The clash between police and demonstrators made its way into newsreels nationwide. Saul Wellman was there. During the Spanish Civil War in the ’30s, the commissar of the volunteer army organized…
Freep speak
Well, the results of the big Free Press investigation into the work of star columnist and mis-assumer Mitch Albom are finally in. We can all breathe easy, because, as the front-page headline Monday assured, there is “no pattern of deception” in Mitch’s vast body of work. News Hits is thrilled, but, as usual, a bit…
East of Benin
This storefront restaurant features the food of Nigeria, and the menu is organized around the starches: yams, cassava and rice, with a “stew” added. One popular dish, red stew, combines tomatoes, sweet red peppers, habanero chiles and onions, seasoned with ginger, thyme and curry powder — ingredients that repeat in Nigerian recipes, in various proportions.…
Eight is enough
After eight amazing years working to bring Detroit artists into the light, the Maniscalco Gallery will be closing its doors for good on Friday, May 20. That’s the day we’re going to have a great big party, “The Last Hurrah,” celebrating the many memories we’ve shared with our friends and supporters. With our second child…
Rivertown revival
After four years of nothingness, redevelopment of Detroit’s desolate Rivertown area may finally be on the horizon. You do remember Rivertown, don’t you? Way back during the administration of former Mayor Dennis Archer, the area along the Detroit River near Chene Park was selected to be the site of the three permanent casinos planned for…
Spinal Tap meets the turntables
A sharp, dead-on satire à la Spinal Tap about a drugged-out raver DJ who turns the techno world on its ear, only to find out it’s left him deaf. The film’s title stems from the genuinely world famous DJ Pete Tong, who makes a cameo appearance as himself. But that’s probably more than you need…
Art Bar
American Life in Poetry by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate Leonard Nathan is a master of short poems in which two or three figures are placed on what can be seen to be a stage, as in a drama. Here, as in other poems like it, the speaker’s sentences are rich with implications. This…
Warren report
Adhering to a philosophy that says you need to spend money in order to make money, the city of Warren decided to spend $148,000 over the next two years to hire a former state legislator as its lobbyist. Critics say it’s an investment that has little chance of paying off. No doubt things are tight…
3-Iron
A clever drifter, a battered wife, a motorcycle, stacks of carry-out menus and a 3-iron golf club are the central figures in this fascinating less-is-more film from South Korean writer-director Kim Ki-Duk. A young loner picks the locks of vacant houses and helps himself to the places for a while, delivering voyeurism at its best.…
Backslash
Search no further — Do we really need another search engine on the Web? Is there life beyond Google? Sure, there’s Yahoo and Dogpile and Webcrawler, but does anyone even use them anymore? When was the last time you heard someone say, “I dunno, but I’ll Alta Vista it and find out.” And yet, despite…
Proactive
Lighten up — City Council President Pro Tem Ken Cockrel Jr. is hosting a town hall meeting to discuss Detroit’s Public Lighting Department. “Public lighting is an issue that many citizens are concerned about as is evident from the calls they place to my office,” Cockrel said in a press release announcing the meeting. Panelists…
Young at Heart
This doc by local filmmaker Sue Marx’s earned an Academy Award in 1987 Academy Award winner for best short documentary. In 30 minutes, Marx tells the striking tale of her father and his new wife, each widowed painters in their 80s when they meet. The film is simple and straightforward, almost quaint. It’s a welcome…
Document it yourself
While the do-it-yourself aesthetic may be best exemplified in music, its methods have spread through most other art forms. Some filmmakers have returned to the old-school method of taking it to the streets, distributing their own work, and that of other like-minded filmmakers, the old-fashioned way — dubbing tapes and swapping or selling them at…
Letters to the Editor
Don’t demonize Israel Metro Times: I am writing to convey my utter disappointment with this publication writing such an unbalanced article about divestment (“Bucking for change,” Metro Times, May 11). As one of the leaders of the pro-Israel movement at University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and one of the organizers of the anti-divestment efforts, neither I…
Unleashed
Mixing flashy fight sequences with sentimental drama, this action film bears many thematic similarities to French filmmaker Luc Besson’s earlier (and best) film, The Professional. Jet Li plays Danny, a ferociously violent enforcer for Bob Hoskins, a vicious loan shark who raised Danny to be a rabid attack dog. After escaping, Danny falls in with…
December’s children
When the battering ram broke through the door of the basement meth lab near Portland, Ore., there, among the mixing tubs of camping fuels and boiled-down allergy meds, the acrid beakers and soiled workbenches, was — curiously — one motherfucker of a mixing board. Our justice system will be working out the exact TripTik of…
Comics
This Modern World Red Meat Comix
Mindhunters
Though this film that has been scheduled and rescheduled for release half a dozen times (never a good sign), director Renny Harlin still delivers a film that’s slick, utterly brainless and far more entertaining than it has any right to be. Seven would-be FBI profilers partake in a simulated serial killer "hunt" before graduation from…
Gay Bull and Monster Pimps
A few weeks ago I was hanging out at a gay bar, chatting away with someone, when I noticed the drink in his hand. A slim silver canister, it looked like yet another new brand of energy drink — and then, under the blinking staccato of the strobe light, I managed to catch the logo.…
2005 Color Photo Contest Winners
First place, color Mara Millich, Grosse Pointe Second place, color Jeffery Wahl, Garden City Third place, color Brenda J. Foster, Redford Editor’s choice, color Amy R. Napier, Rochester Hills Experimental photo winners Candid photo winners Black and White photo winners Cover Story
Monster-in-Law
Don’t call it a comeback. Jane Fonda’s first film in 15 years is an insufferable rip-off of Meet the Parents, featuring an unbelievably sexless, bohemian Jennifer Lopez as the future unwanted daughter-in-law of Fonda’s shrill, mentally unstable, aging career woman. Fonda attempts to have some fun with the role, but only the supporting Wanda Sykes…
Tunes for toys
Pablo Picasso once proclaimed himself king of the rag pickers. Straddling the worlds of visual and aural arts, embracing old music boxes, tube amplifiers, rotisserie grill motors, toys and such, Frank Pahl is, at the very least, among the bric-a-brac royalty. There’s a long pause when he’s asked to explain his aesthetic. His varied projects…
2005 Experimental Photo Contest Winners
First place, experimental Byron L. Bull, Royal Oak Second place, experimental David S. Blunk II, Detroit Third place, experimental Byron L. Bull, Royal Oak Honorable mention, experimental Jennifer Daniel, Ferndale Black and White photo winners Candid photo winners Color photo winners Cover Story
Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith
Let’s face it; you can’t get much more critic-proof than Star Wars. The last two films were lumbering and overblown bores and they still managed to make a billion dollars. Sith easily trumps them both. Sure, Anakin and Padme’s love affair has all the melodrama of a hysterical schoolgirl (and the insipid dialogue to match),…
What it takes
Here is Frank Pahl’s list of instruments and devices for his Artcite exhibition and performances: exhibition materials 4 air organs w/rotisseries 16 legs for air organs 6 air organs without rotisseries 1 walkman cd player (panasonic) 1 multiple disc (4) cd player 8 lamps 1 record player 1 1/4″ cord w/1/8″ adapter 1 mr. xmas…
2005 Black and White Photo Contest Winners
First place, black and white Alice Rice, West Bloomfield Second place, black and white Brenda J. Foster, Redford Third place, black and white Iaisna Smith, Detroit Editor’s choice, black and white Derek Hartl, Detroit Honorable mention, black and white Paul Beroff, Livonia Honorable mention, black and white Laura Magewick, Redford Candid photo winners Color photo…
Captain Vic
Scheduled guest of honor at the screening of Professional Revolutionary, publisher and editorial director of The Nation Victor Navasky has a new book out, A Matter of Opinion. As the title suggests, it’s an examination of the role of the journal in contemporary society. To some extent a professional memoir disguised as a thesis, Navasky’s…
Head cheese
Before the Cro-Mags, Murphy’s Law or Sick of It All, there was Agnostic Front. Led by singer Roger Miret and guitarist Vinnie Stigma, they were the godfathers of the abrasive and abusive cacophony that is NYC hardcore. Launched in 1982, they gigged Sunday matinees at CBGBs before releasing 1984’s seminal slab o’ aggression, the aptly…
2005 Candid Photo Contest Winners
First place, candid Douglas Shimmin, Madison Heights Second place, candid David Manzo, Royal Oak Third place, candid John Luebke, Dearborn Honorable mention, candid Kate Paris, Ferndale Color photo winners Experimental photo winners Black and White photo winners Cover Story
Snap judgments
On a Sunday afternoon in Detroit, with packs of unexposed film, David Blunk and some friends in the Polaroid Trading Club head out for an urban scavenger hunt. Roaming through rubble and void, they take pictures and shake them dry, occasionally jamming the prints back in the camera for multiple exposure. On the East Side…
‘Are you from England or somethin’?’
Already critically heralded as one of the top independent records of the year, (they played it on NPR’s All Things Considered and everything), Picaresque is a certain smash among the indie intellectual set and those in-the-know paralegals who decorate their coffee tables with untouched issues of the New Yorker. But for those of us who…
Sprawling across the generations
“You can’t expect us to give up our SUVs. The winters are harsh here.” —Birmingham high school student, May 12, 2005 Last week I was a sort of moderator at an event in which the East Michigan Environmental Action Council tried to get high school students to notice that our enormously wasteful way of…
Press in a mess
A red-eyed, drunken military officer, who was dressed in full uniform replete with enough medals and ribbons to make Idi Amin look like a piker, toyed menacingly with me, demanding my reporter’s notebook and making it clear that he could pretty much do to me whatever he wanted. Nearby in the same plush room, Detroit…
Crash course
I can’t imagine what kind of hard-bargaining tactics brought the movie Crash to the screen, even with all the heavyweight actors involved. I would surely love to know. In an age when the vast majority of major motion pictures don’t dare to deal with any issue of real substance, and when character development, plot development…
End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones
Any self-respecting Ramones fan has already cretin-hopped to an art-house cinema to see this superlative documentary, so it’s the DVD bonuses that provide incentive to send more greenbacks to the respective estates of Johnny, Joey and Dee Dee. What you get are 10 interview excerpts that don’t tell the linear story of the Ramones but…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The advice I have for you may not go over well with the part of you that’s prone to acting like a battering ram. Nevertheless, I’m convinced it’s the correct thing to do, so please suppress your head-butting instincts for now, and heed these bits of wisdom from ancient Chinese philosopher…
Night & Day
Wednesday • 18 Karaoke Gong Show MUSIC/FUN FOR ALL Showbiz impresario Chuck Barris might have perfected the American tradition of schlock TV with the aggressively ridiculous Gong Show, but if you make your way to the Belmont in Hamtramck, you might find the torch has been passed. Hosted by Mr. Eccentricity himself — local artist…
Grievous indie angel
It takes a lot of courage to make a lo-fi solo record these days. It takes even more guts to do it a second time. Known to the Detroit’s pasty-skinned indie set as a one-time member of Saturday Looks Good To Me and the Black Forest Girls, Miss Kelly Jean Caldwell may have been singing…
Media Blackout
Have some cake, it’s the 51st birthday edition of MB33! • The Beatles — “Birthday” (Apple) :: Satanic Majesties is to Sgt. Pepper what the Beatles are to Satanic Majesties. Think about it. • Orthrelm — Ov (Ipecac) :: Everybody should own at least one album that can’t be listened to all the way through.…
A pepper primer
Besides “be careful where you scratch” anecdotes about handling chile peppers — then handling yourself — the funniest hot sauce story I’ve heard came from John Jonna, an owner of the recently closed Merchant of Vino store in downtown Royal Oak. Jonna grabbed hold of the hot sauce rage just as it really took off…
Tangled Up / Live Or Else
From an archival perspective, the Necros always seemed to get short shrift. But hopefully the twofer at hand will restore a few pages to the history books; along with Detroit’s own Negative Approach, the Maumee, Ohio, combo (1979-88) was among the premier Midwest hardcore outfits of the era. Tangled Up, their second LP, famously sporting…
Settling unease about social disease
Q: I am a 26-year-old hetero male, and I recently started hooking up with a new girl. She’s very cute and smart, and I’m really attracted to her. During a recent make-out session, she informed me that she has HPV, the STD that causes genital warts. From what I’ve read, condoms don’t necessarily mean you’re…
Weapons of mass deception
Bill Clinton lies about getting a hummer and gets hauled through impeachment hearings. George Bush lies about weapons of mass destruction to justify going to war and the media yawn, even when a smoking gun documenting the deception surfaces. What the hell’s going on? On May 1 the Sunday Times of London revealed documents indicating…
The Fatals
The Fatals seem to pull a ruse on anyone lending an ear. With three 7-inch singles pressed in depressingly limited quantities (all of which sold out instantly), the logical mind figures this CD compiling their unavailable sides as a smart move. To make the CD itself as difficult to find (only 300 copies) as any…
